Worth the Bargain? Collective Bargaining Agreements in Unionized Charter Schools

ABSTRACT

For both proponents and critics alike, among the most salient features of charter schooling today is their freedom from collective bargaining agreements that shape staffing and work rules and limit school administrators’ discretion. This is changing in some states where a small but growing number of charter schools are unionized. How collective bargaining agreements forged by charter school teachers and administrators shape the freedoms charter schools traditionally enjoy, and whether these differ from traditional school districts, is important to understand unionization’s impact on the sector. We analyze and compare collective bargaining agreements in unionized charter schools with those found in nearby, traditional school districts. The results suggest that CBAs in charter schools are similar to those in school districts, but may also preserve administrator flexibility in areas related to managing teacher talent.

KEYWORDS:

• Charter schools
• teachers unions
• collective bargaining

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. More recently, some states have sought to rescind or limit collective bargaining rights for public employees. Wisconsin’s Act 10, for example, was passed in 2011 and limited collective bargaining for public employees to wages and required unions to recertify annually.

2. TNTP was founded as The New Teacher Project in 1997. They changed their name to “TNTP” in 2011. See TNTP, December 9, 2011, “TNTP: Reimagine Teaching,” Accessed: https://tntp.org/news-and-press/view/tntp-reimagine-teaching.

3. This is the opposite of what one might expect in traditional school districts, where absent the granting of specific authority to act, it is assumed that such authority is limited or does not exist. See Hess and Loup (2008).

4. This includes 5 schools covered by Camino Nuevo’s CBA, 4 schools covered by Civitas’ CBA, 20 schools covered by Green Dot’s CBA, 2 schools covered by Pembroke Pines’ CBA. Five other CBAs cover freestanding, single-site schools (Arts Academy, Community School of Excellence, Morris Jeff, New Beginnings and University Prep).

5. Two schools abide by the CBA for Pembroke Pines, which is not considered a CMO by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

6. Many charter schools are founded with a specific emphasis or mission. In “no excuse,” community-based, or gifted programs (and others), it may be the case that specific teacher behaviors and philosophy are critical to a school’s success. In each of the collective bargaining agreements we analyzed, inherent management to “tak(e) whatever action is necessary or advisable to determine, manage and fulfill the Employer’s mission and to direct the Employer’s employees” are clearly noted. However, future research may explore the extent to which this such clauses actually grant Employers discretion over key mission-related judgments.

7. Given the fact that state law may impose many common administrative constraints (for example, California state law specifies tenure requisites), comparisons between a charter contract and the nearest geographic district are important. These comparisons aid in assumption that state law specifies common items excluded across context.

8. According to the Hess and Loup (2008) coding scheme, practices that are neither explicitly forbidden nor allowed are coded as a “C” or 2.0. In order to preserve comparability, we follow this procedure in our analysis of charter school CBAs. However, there are good reasons to believe that norms around administrative discretion vary between districts and charter schools such that unspecified provisions mean something different for charter schools than they do for school districts.

9. These efforts were spurred in no small part by the Obama Administration’s 2009 Race to the Top competition, as well as ESEA flexibility waivers, both of which incentivized changes to teacher evaluation policy. See https://www.ecs.org/wp-content/uploads/Teacher_Evaluations.pdf.

10. In some cases, language surrounding evaluations notes that student performance may be used, but the contract is not clear on whether or not student performance can be factored into personnel (transfer, layoff, promotion, dismissal) or compensation decisions. If a contract does not specify concretely that student performance can or cannot be used in such decisions, we say that the relationship is not stated.

11. We specifically coded for language surrounding layoffs. We did not examine whether or not student performance measures might be used for dismissal.

12. See Thomsen (2014).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools [NA].